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    The problem with JSLint is that it was written by Douglas Crockford who believes that semi-colons should be mandatory. Thus the alert. Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 5:36
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    @staticsan - It's not just a personal belief. Requiring semi-colons at the end of every line means that the js file can be minified into a single line file. Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 11:04
  • I am unclear about the virtue of a "single line file" when the semicolon character takes as many bytes as the newline character. What is the point of that sort of "minification"? Commented May 11, 2018 at 4:32
  • @EFC, you're right for lines that end with semicolons, but there are a lot of other newlines that get removed at the end of many other lines. Empty lines, lines that end with a brace or parentheses, etc. Commented May 14, 2018 at 16:32
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    @EFC, again yes you're correct, and in the almost 10 years since I wrote this answer minifiers are A LOT smarter than they used to be. And if, like me, you are stuck in Windows where we have CRLF line endings, then a carriage return is in fact one byte larger than a semicolon in UTF-8. 0a0d vs 3b hex Commented May 14, 2018 at 18:13